{"id":55862,"date":"2016-06-22T13:16:16","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T19:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=55862"},"modified":"2016-06-22T05:22:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T12:22:00","slug":"land-dispute-in-panama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/06\/22\/land-dispute-in-panama\/","title":{"rendered":"Land dispute in Panama"},"content":{"rendered":"

RANJITH SOYSA<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

According to reports the Police is planning to evict 50 odd farmer families from Panama if they do not vacate the lands occupied before 30th June 2016<\/p>\n

It is indeed an act of cruelty by the Police and the other authorities for not allowing the peasant families to continue their activities on their ancestral lands which they have been occupying from the time of 1848 rebellion against the British colonialists. The Cabinet recently approved the release of the land to these families in February 2015, but, a powerful garment factory businessman\/ politician in the area is determined to build a 5 star luxury hotel in the land and is dictating terms to the Police and the other government agencies to evict the poor farmers.<\/p>\n

It has to be mentioned that the Pottuvil Police filed action against the occupants \u2013case no 8455\/PC\/2009 -and the Pottuvil courts issued a judgement on 06-05-2015 saying that the petitioner \u2013the Police- failed to prove that the land occupied by the parties was a forest reserve and the Court rejected the Police claims and allowed the occupants to continue their stay in the subject land. Yet. the Police was reactivated by the unseen forces and again filed a case on 26-11-2015 against these occupants. The Court again rejected the Police action by stating that it is wrong\/illegal to file action repeatedly citing the same offense regarding which the Court has previously issued a judgement. Further, the Court stated that such action tends to waste the time of the respondents and affect adversely their day to day activities. The Court also mentioned that a person\u2019s the right to live has to be protected and advised the Police not to violate the basic human rights through wasteful efforts.<\/p>\n

The respondents appealed to the Human Rights Commission and the investigation report HRC\/AM\/105\/10\/B\/OT was issued on 27.08-2010.\u00a0 This report also accepted that respondents should be allowed to occupy and engage in farming activities and if they have to be evicted it is necessary that a proper, government approved procedure should be used.<\/p>\n

The Police is attempting again\u00a0 to take action, if the occupants do not leave from their land on or before 30 June 2016.in spite of two judgements already given in favor of the poor. Such a repulsive series of illegal activities against these poor occupants of Panama land is nothing but the violation of their of basic human rights.<\/p>\n

The ordinary people are watching the situation with immense interest to see whether the justice will prevail.<\/p>\n

RANJITH SOYSA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RANJITH SOYSA According to reports the Police is planning to evict 50 odd farmer families from Panama if they do not vacate the lands occupied before 30th June 2016 It is indeed an act of cruelty by the Police and the other authorities for not allowing the peasant families to continue their activities on their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}